The memoir

Ashes Still Sing: A Marine’s Reckoning

The record was not an achievement. It was an alibi.

On Veterans Day 2015, I spent twenty-four hours doing pull-ups in Times Square. The count was public. The rest of the story was harder to tell.

Ashes Still Sing: A Marine’s Reckoning follows a life from Waiʻanae to Ramadi, through ministry, marriage, fatherhood, and the consequences of my own choices. It asks what we inherit, what we repeat, and what responsibility looks like when the people we love have already paid part of the cost.

Alongside the remembered events of my life runs Wöenderland, a fictional world I created for this memoir. Drawing on Alice in Wonderland, it gives trauma an imagined landscape and brings another dimension to the reckoning.

There is humor here. There is faith. There are people whose lives cannot be reduced to what they taught me.

The manuscript is complete. When the book has a publishing home, readers on the list will hear it from me.

Publishing and representation inquiries are welcome.

A practical companion is not yet released: the Lōkahi Ola Method Workbook. The memoir tells the story. The workbook helps you practice.